Priority is claimed with respect to German Application No. 199 26 604.2-22 filed in Germany on Jun. 11, 1999, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The invention relates to a pedal arrangement in the footwell of a motor vehicle.
It is known to configure the pedal arrangement in the footwell of motor vehicles in such a manner that in the event of a load caused by a head-on collision, at least the brake pedal, which is coupled to a brake-activating unit, is uncoupled from the latter in order to avoid movement of the pedal into the footwell (cf., for example, DE 35 33 420 C2; DE 19 51 58 52 A1; DE 19 61 73 72 C1).
DE 28 41 988 C2 also discloses a pedal arrangement in which, the bearing bracket which supports a pedal lever in a suspended manner and such that it can pivot can, in the event of a crash, be torn off from an upper fastening point in the engine compartment and can be pivoted about a lower fastening point in such a manner that the pedal is therefore displaced in the direction of the front wall of the vehicle interior.
This construction requires the pedal bearing bracket to be arranged within the engine compartment and at such a distance in front of the front wall separating the said engine compartment from the vehicle interior that should a corresponding accident occur, there is sufficient yielding space available for the said bearing bracket to be displaced by pivoting.
Accordingly, this constructional solution requires a relatively large clearance volume through an upper front-wall part correspondingly facing into the vehicle interior, with the pedal lever having to be guided through the front wall, in a correspondingly displaceable and sealed manner.
The object of the invention is to specify a pedal arrangement which arrangement does not require any installation space in the engine compartment, provides good accessibility to the pedal mounting and, in the event of a front-wall intrusion, provides further distance from the driver""s legs and/or feet.
According to the invention, this object is achieved by the features of the present invention as described and claimed hereinafter.
According to the invention, a bearing bracket, is fitted to the front wall, on the vehicle interior side, the mounting of the pedal on an upper bearing-bracket segment, and also the equipping thereof with a tear-off element which extends in the opposite direction with respect to the front wall and, in the event of the bearing bracket being displaced into the footwell because of an intrusion of the front wall, strikes against a stationary abutment, causing the following:
When a front wall is pushed back because of an accident, the deformation of the said front wall is often greater in the wall region in the vicinity of the floor than in the upper wall region. Therefore, in the event of a deformation of this type, a bearing body mounted on the inside of the front wall normally rotates upwards about a vehicle transverse axis, as a result of which the pedal is pivoted into the footwell toward the driver.
The bearing body is prevented from rotating in this manner by the interaction of the tear-off element, which is provided according to the invention, with the abutment, by the interaction of these parts subjecting the bearing bracket to a rupture load which causes that segment of the bearing bracket which bears the pedal pivot shaft to break away from its remaining part. In this forced rupture, the pedal-lever bearing point is therefore torn out of the bearing bracket, the at least one pedal lever falling loosely downwards.
A preferred refinement of the invention is characterized in that the tear-off element is a double-armed lever whose one lever arm can be placed against a first stop of that bearing bracket part which remains against the front wall during the tearing off and which is at a low location with respect to the lever pivot shaft, and in that the abutment, in the event of a crash, runs in a curved manner onto the upper side, curved sloping downwards towards the lever end, of the other lever arm of the double-armed lever. By means of the design of the tear-off element as a double lever in conjunction with the first stop assigned to the said element at the bracket end, the rupture is brought about by a torque acting on the bearing bracket.
The bearing bracket may, for example, be configured in such a manner that the rupture will take place along a defined rupture section. For this purpose, the bearing bracket may, for example, have appropriate weak points in the material.
In this case, the mutually interacting, curved surfaces of the double-armed lever and abutment ensure that even when the bearing bracket is displaced backwards in a purely translatory manner, the double-armed lever is always caused to rotate in a downward direction.
A particularly suitable construction is characterized in that a second stop is provided on the bearing bracket of the rupture zone and above the first stop, and the lever arm acting on the bearing bracket is designed in such a manner that when the double-armed lever is pivoted, the second stop can first of all be torn off from the bearing bracket by this lever arm in order to form a predetermined rupture point. In this case, in a head-on collision a predetermined rupture point is first of all produced by the double-armed lever in interaction with the second stop on the bearing bracket. This provides the advantage of constructionally configuring the bearing bracket in such a manner that the actual rupture can be obtained under favourable bending and compression loads on the lever-form tear-off element.
The arrangement of the double-armed lever on the pedal pivot shaft offers the advantage of being able to dispense with the arrangement of special mounting means for the said lever on the bearing bracket.
Further advantageous refinements of the invention are characterized in that the double-armed lever is in the form of an inverted U in cross section and fits over a web-like, upper saddle of the bearing bracket, and in that the two stops per U-limb of the lever arm assigned to them of the double-armed lever each have a stop lug protruding laterally from the bearing bracket. In addition, provision is made for at least one of the stop lugs of the first stop to simultaneously form an abutment for fixing the pedal in its non-depressed ready position. In one development, provision is made for that lever arm of the double-armed lever which is assigned to the stops to grip with its U-limbs, in each case by means of a front projecting piece, under the stop lugs of the second stop and to be brought into engagement with the said stop lugs. According to the invention, the pedal arrangement has a spring element which attempts to keep the double-armed lever and the front projecting pieces of its lever arm continuously in engagement with the stop lugs of the second stop, while the stop lugs of the first stop do not come into contact with the U-limbs.